Not only Struwwelpeter: Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894) and his thoughtful observations on epilepsy

Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894) is the author of Der Struwwelpeter (Shaggy Peter, 1845), a famous collection of moralistic tales for children. He was a psychiatrist who founded the mental asylum in Frankfurt am Mein. In 1859, Hoffmann published a book on "Observations on mental disorders and epilepsy", following the classification system proposed by Wilhelm Griesinger (1817-1868). Herein, Hoffmann explores, among others, the influence of lunar phases, seasonality, and circadian rhythm on seizure frequency, topics that continue to be object of investigation. In his monograph, Hoffmann refers to some patients with seizure semiology showing a somatotopic distribution and spreading to different body regions. Although devoid of physiopathological or anatomo-clinical interpretation, these observations precede by almost ten years the first description of the march of seizure activity from an initial focus made by John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911). Consistently with the main topic of his book, Hofmann discusses in detail the association between altered mental states and epileptic seizures, reporting the first case of forced normalization, a phenomenon later described by the Swiss neuropsychiatrist Hans Heinrich Landolt (1917-1971) in 1953.